Luke Steele Ponders Reincarnation & Salvation On "Armageddon Slice"

New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Luke Steele shares "Armageddon Slice," the latest preview of his forthcoming debut solo album Listen To The Water (out May 13). "Armageddon Slice" was written during the earliest days of the COVID pandemic, when borders were closing and humanity's immediate future was uncertain. As fingerpicked guitar figures and a retrofuturist synthesizer fantasia unfurl around Steele's cryptic ponderings, "Armageddon Slice" posits mortality with a fatalist whimsy: "Am I gonna be a rose bush or a giant palm? Or a big dog named Bruce who chases after children each day after school? … Bless the world I played my part."

Listen To The Water finds the Empire Of The Sun frontman pulling disparate strains of searching, astrally amplified music - from Bowie's strummier glam rock work to the experimental rush of early, acoustic Beck - into direct and anthemic songs draped in a distinct sonic tapestry of Japanese synthesizers, pedal steel (Dan Dugmore), acoustic guitars, and a patchwork of atypical percussion (from Daft Punk collaborator Brian Kilgore). It reveals itself to be a work of pointed words cloaked in a richly swirling atmosphere, an album that captures a blend of innocence and wisdom.

According to Rolling Stone, the album's lead single, "Common Man" "sets the heartfelt tone of human frailty seen throughout the record thanks to its stellar instrumentation and powerful lyrics".